Articles and Op-Edshttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006
enGood Man, Minor President, Fodder for Politickinghttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/good_man_minor_president_fodder_for_politicking_4630
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<span class="date-display-single">December 29, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/120" title="View user profile.">James Pinkerton</a> </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 29, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>Let’s divide this column on the late Gerald Ford into three parts: First, Ford the man. Second, Ford as an historical memory. Third, Ford as a subject of manipulation in the media.</p><p>First, I always liked Ford -- who didn’t? He served his country in wartime, was married to the same woman for 58 years, raised four children. And amid all the obituary-ing, it’s hard to find anyone who has any criticism of him as a person. That’s rare enough for anybody, let alone someone who rose to the pinnacle of American politics.</p><p>Second, as a historical figure, Ford will be ranked as a minor president. Historians will remember Richard Nixon, who preceded him, and they will remember Ronald Reagan, who entered the White House in 1980, but Ford will be chronicled merely as the fellow who cleaned up the Oval Office after the Watergate scandal -- using the admittedly messy mechanism of pardoning Nixon. </p><p>Indeed, it seems to me that one of the reasons Ford’s passing has received so much attention is for reporters and pundits to enjoy once more the opportunity to "wallow in Watergate." Every time reporters emphasize how good Ford was they get a chance to throw in how bad Nixon was. And media types love doing that.</p><p>That is, Ford will be remembered more as a caretaker, who -- through little fault of his own, given his brief tenure in office -- presided over a low ebb for America. Overseas, the United States was defeated, finally, in Vietnam, even as Soviet military power was on the rise -- thus demonstrating to almost everyone that "détente" was an illusion. And on the home front Ford offered little more than slogans as an inflationary recession ravaged the economy and sent unemployment to the highest levels since the 1930s. Such "stagflation" signaled the final collapse of the Keynesian "tax and spend" fiscal model inherited from the New Deal, but Ford failed to see the implosion of an obsolete economic paradigm.</p><p>Unfortunately, the 38th president was not the transformative leader to resolve such deep problems. Their solution would have to wait for Reagan, who injected new ideas -- the Strategic Defense Initiative to flummox the Russians and tax-rate-cutting "supply-side" economics to revive savings and investment -- which dramatically changed the international and domestic equations, leading to the Soviet Union’s collapse and to America’s revival.</p><p>In other words, Ford’s brand of Republicanism was substantially repudiated by another Republican, Reagan. And so, as to our third point -- Ford as a subject of manipulation in the media by the living -- it’s interesting to note that Reagan’s widow, Nancy, has chosen to link herself so closely to the Ford family. She issued a eulogizing statement beginning with an assertion that is sweet but, strictly speaking, not true: "Ronnie and I always considered him a dear friend and close political ally."</p><p>It’s worth remembering that Ronald Reagan -- teamed, of course, with wife Nancy -- was a fierce critic of Ford’s policies, so fierce that in 1976 the Gipper tried to take the Republican nomination away from the incumbent president. That made them political enemies, not political allies.</p><p>So why is Nancy Reagan now saying all these nice things about Gerald Ford? Aside from the natural instinct to accentuate the positive at a time such as this, there’s another reason: Late in life, Ford supported Nancy on stem cell research, an issue that never arose when either the Fords, or the Reagans, were in the White House. As Nancy explained in her statement, "His early support of stem cell research has been important in getting the U.S. Congress to debate the potential lifesaving cures and treatments that may result." In other words, the political needs of today have wiped away bitter memories of battles 30 years ago.</p><p>That’s politics for you. And Ford, who was a good man but not a naïve man, would have understood that game perfectly.</p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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New America Fellows ProgramElections & Political PartiesMediaNewsdayFri, 29 Dec 2006 05:13:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/120" title="View user profile.">James Pinkerton</a>7751 at http://newamerica.netThe End of the West As We Know It?http://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/the_end_of_the_west_as_we_know_it_4589
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<span class="date-display-single">December 28, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/90" title="View user profile.">Anatol Lieven</a> </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 28, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>Every political, social and economic system ever created has sooner or later encountered a challenge that its very nature has made it incapable of meeting. The Confucian ruling system of imperial China, which lasted for more than 2,000 years, has some claim still to be the most successful in history, but because it was founded on values of stability and continuity, rather than dynamism and inventiveness, it eventually proved unable to survive in the face of Western imperial capitalism.</p><p>For market economies, and the Western model of democracy with which they have been associated, the existential challenge for the foreseeable future will be global warming. Other threats like terrorism may well be damaging, but no other conceivable threat or combination of threats can possibly destroy our entire system. As the recent British official commission chaired by Sir Nicholas Stern correctly stated, climate change "is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."</p><p>The question now facing us is whether global capitalism and Western democracy can follow the Stern report’s recommendations, and make the limited economic adjustments necessary to keep global warming within bounds that will allow us to preserve our system in a recognizable form; or whether our system is so dependent on unlimited consumption that it is by its nature incapable of demanding even small sacrifices from its present elites and populations.</p><p>If the latter proves the case, and the world suffers radically destructive climate change, then we must recognize that everything that the West now stands for will be rejected by future generations. The entire democratic capitalist system will be seen to have failed utterly as a model for humanity and as a custodian of essential human interests.</p><p>Even the relatively conservative predictions offered by the Stern report, of a drop in annual global gross domestic product of up to 20 percent by the end of this century, imply a crisis on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s; and as we know, the effects of that depression were not restricted to economics. In much of Europe, as well as Latin America and Japan, democracies collapsed and were replaced by authoritarian regimes.</p><p>As the report makes clear, however, if we continue with "business as usual" when it comes to the emission of greenhouse gases, then we will not have to wait till the end of the century to see disastrous consequences. Long before then, a combination of floods, droughts and famine will have destroyed states in many poorer parts of the earth -- as has already occurred in recent decades in Somalia.</p><p>If the conservative estimates of the Stern report are correct, then already by 2050 the effects of climate change may be such as to wreck the societies of Pakistan and Bangladesh; and if these states collapse, how can India and other countries possibly insulate themselves?</p><p>At that point, not only will today’s obsessive concern with terrorism appear insignificant, but all the democratizing efforts of Western states, and of private individuals and bodies like George Soros and his Open Society Institute, will be rendered completely meaningless. So, of course, will every effort directed today toward the reduction of poverty and disease.</p><p>And this is only to examine the likely medium-term consequences of climate change. For the further future, the report predicts that if we continue with business as usual, then the rise in average global temperature could well top 5 degrees Celsius. To judge by what we know of the history of the world’s climate, this would almost certainly lead to the melting of the polar ice caps, and a rise in sea levels of up to 25 meters.</p><p>As pointed out by Al Gore in <em>An Inconvenient Truth</em>, this would mean the end of many of the world’s greatest cities. The resulting human migration could be on such a scale as to bring modern civilization to an end.</p><p>If this comes to pass, what will our descendants make of a political and media culture that devotes little attention to this threat when compared with sports, consumer goods, leisure and a threat from terrorism that is puny by comparison? Will they remember us as great paragons of human progress and freedom? They are more likely to spit on our graves.</p><p>Underlying Western free-market democracy, and its American form in particular, is the belief that this system is of permanent value to mankind: a "New Order of the Ages," as the motto on the U.S. Great Seal has it. It is not supposed to serve only the short- term and selfish interests of existing Western populations. If our system is indeed no more than that, then it will pass from history even more utterly than Confucian China -- and will deserve to do so.</p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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New America Fellows ProgramAmerican Strategy ProgramPolitical HistoryEnergy & EnvironmentInternational Herald TribuneThu, 28 Dec 2006 22:11:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/90" title="View user profile.">Anatol Lieven</a>7752 at http://newamerica.netChristmas Lives, Thanks to Atheism, Islamhttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/christmas_lives_thanks_to_atheism_islam_4629
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<span class="date-display-single">December 27, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/120" title="View user profile.">James Pinkerton</a> </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 27, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>So Christmas has survived yet another year.</p><p>Yes, there has been a war on Christmas, fought by a few lefty lawyers who managed to buffalo some multiculturalist bureaucrats and politicians. But it’s been a losing war:</p><p>First, and most obviously, there’s the steadfast religiosity of the American people; polls routinely show that 90 percent of Americans believe in God. Secular progressives have done their best to knock the faith out of people, but it doesn’t seem to be working.</p><p>Part of the problem is that those who are most inclined to accept "modernity" are oftentimes the least inclined to have children. So "converts" to atheism have a way of disappearing without heirs, while those who stick with their faith, including the injunction to go forth and multiply, are more likely to have kids who inherit at least some degree of devotion. </p><p>A second reason for the survival of Christmas is that people seek out rituals and traditions to help provide meaning and context for their lives. The self-declared forces of enlightenment and progress thought that they could demolish the structures of belief, and that after those structures had fallen, people would be free and liberated. Well, it didn’t work out like that: People who were liberated from the old ways often found they had become slaves to some new ideology -- made worse, as Winston Churchill said of the Nazis, "by the lights of perverted science."</p><p>In which case, Christianity starts to look pretty good to Christians. And so, to adapt a witticism from 18th-century writer Voltaire -- himself an agnostic, at most -- if Christmas didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it.</p><p>A third reason is backlash. Around the world, conservative, even reactionary, religions are on the rise. In India, for example, Hindu fundamentalism is gaining strength, as Indians react to their neighboring Islamic countries and also to the increase in commercial interaction with the West. In China, millions are moving toward Christianity, while the government is pushing a neo-Confucianism. Africa is increasingly divided between the competing dynamisms of Christian and Muslim evangelism.</p><p>And the Middle East -- well, Americans know about that. Islamic fundamentalism has been the guiding energy behind suicide bombers and al-Qaida, and we can bet there’s an even bigger religious revival occurring in Iraq, as both Shia and the Sunni look to heaven for inspiration.</p><p>If that’s the climate around the world, it makes sense that Christianity would grow in its homelands, too. If others clutch their holy books, Americans will respond by reaching for their own comfortable Bible. The phenomenon is akin to the sudden proliferation of American flags after 9/11: when a treasured institution, be it God or country, is under assault, the instinct is to rally around, visibly.</p><p>So we might consider the reaction to the recent announcement of a Muslim African-American, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), that he would hold his hand on a Quran when he is sworn in as a member of the 110th Congress. Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) wrote a letter to his constituents in response, warning that if Americans "don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Quran."</p><p>Liberals and open-border advocates were outraged, of course, but you might ask yourself: Do you want more Muslims moving to America? Do you look forward to more Muslims in Congress -- you know, with access to classified national security information, including counter-terrorism plans? If the answer is "no," then it’s likely that you are moving closer to Goode’s immigration position -- and that, in addition, the sturdy observance of Christmas looks like a better and better bulwark.</p><p>That’s why Christmas survived 2006. Christianity is more than a religion of peace; it includes also a doctrine of self-defense. And sometimes, that’s a fighting faith.</p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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New America Fellows ProgramReligionNewsdayWed, 27 Dec 2006 05:07:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/120" title="View user profile.">James Pinkerton</a>7753 at http://newamerica.netEnter Centerhttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/enter_center_4587
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<span class="date-display-single">December 25, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/146" title="View user profile.">Jacob Hacker</a> </div>
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Paul Pierson, professor of political science, University of California at Berkeley </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 25, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>Last year, we published a book called <em>Off Center</em>, in which we argued that Republicans were governing well to the right of the U.S. electorate -- and getting away with it. Americans, we wrote, remained resolutely centrist and, if anything, had moved slightly leftward in recent years. But Republicans had managed to translate their razor-thin electoral margins into a well-financed political machine that pushed policy to the right while providing Republicans with what we called "backlash insurance" -- the capacity to protect GOP incumbents against voter retaliation for their extreme positions.</p><p>Backlash insurance had worked so well for so long that many congressional Republicans seemed to think they were invincible. Talk of a Democratic wave began more than a year ago. Yet Republicans made little effort to move to higher ground. After Hurricane Katrina, they slammed through a budget that slashed benefits for the needy then eked out another big tax cut for the rich, all the while defending one tarnished incumbent after another as scandals began to pile up. </p><p>But, while the machine they built was capable of withstanding a Category Three storm, what hit Republicans this year was more like a Category Five -- mainly thanks to Iraq. And, now that they have lost their majority, Republicans are in even bigger trouble than they may realize. That’s because many of the gambits they used to obscure how far right they had moved depended on majority control. Savvy use of their narrow House and Senate majorities was how, in a 50-50 nation, Republicans governed as if they had an overwhelming advantage -- as if they were the American center rather than its right-most flank. Now that its congressional majority is gone, the GOP’s "off-center" positions will be more exposed than ever. And, if Democrats play their cards right, voters will be reminded of this every day until election night 2008.</p><p>Political pundits fixate on what candidates say and do, but Republican backlash insurance was mostly about organization. The Republican machine -- and the tight network of elites who ran it -- was a formidable asset in the GOP’s intense competition with the much less coordinated Democrats. Republican leaders used this organizational edge to tightly control political access, constructing a "pay to play" system that mobilized powerful interests behind their initiatives while building unprecedented war chests. The leadership’s control over the meetings where laws were drafted and pork was distributed (often with lobbyists sitting in) allowed it to shut out Democrats and gave rank-and-file Republicans strong incentives to follow marching orders.</p><p>Just as important, but much less recognized, tight organization allowed the GOP to manipulate the legislative process. Bills inimical to Republican interests were kept off the agenda. Anything allowed a hearing was steered sharply right. The Republican leadership became adept at using moderate packaging to obscure the radicalism of specific measures. In battles over the Bush tax cuts -- overwhelmingly tilted toward the rich -- Republicans didn’t just twist the facts; they wrote the bills so that all the goodies for the middle class came up front, while the real budget effects and big benefits for the rich only came later or were hidden with budgetary sleight of hand.</p><p>Meanwhile, procedural tricks ensured not just that crucial bills squeaked through, but also that GOP "moderates" would have ample opportunities to posture as mavericks. For example, moderates would vote for bipartisan bills that would get rewritten along ultra-conservative lines by a handpicked group of Republicans in House-Senate conference committees. (Bills crafted by conference committees can’t be amended.) Thus, a reasonable prescription-drug bill backed by Ted Kennedy in the Senate became a give-away to drug and insurance companies larded with money for Health Savings Accounts in a Republican-controlled conference. Vulnerable Republicans came to specialize in highly publicized displays of faux independence -- displays carefully orchestrated to pose no real obstacle to an aggressively conservative agenda.</p><p>Of course, if all else failed, Republicans could always drown pesky challengers with eleventh-hour spending. Revealingly, even amid the GOP trainwreck of 2006, Republicans still managed to win most of the closest House races, in part because of these potent organizational weapons.</p><p>Yet these weapons weren’t nearly as effective in 2006 as they had been in the past. The main reason was Iraq, which effectively nationalized the election while disrupting Republican control over the political agenda. Instead of a series of beauty contests between local candidates -- which advantage incumbents and play to the strengths of GOP organization and obfuscation -- 2006 became an issues-oriented referendum on the president and his allies, a disadvantage Republicans could not fully overcome.</p><p>To be sure, the perks of majority control weren’t the only thing that enabled the GOP to win elections despite its steady rightward march. There was an institutional factor at work, too -- one that, unfortunately for Democrats, won’t disappear with this election: The House and Senate electoral maps give Republicans a substantial advantage in translating popular votes into congressional seats. In 2004, Bush carried nearly six in ten House districts while winning less than 52 percent of the vote -- in part because of Republican gerrymandering after the 2000 census. The Senate, meanwhile, is institutionally biased toward conservative, rural states, since all states have two senators regardless of their population. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote but carried 30 states.</p><p>These advantages didn’t evaporate in 2006. According to David Mayhew of Yale, the popular-vote swing since 2004 was 5.5 points, while the Democrats gained 30 House seats. Compare that with 1994, when the Republicans achieved a six-point swing in the popular vote but picked up 52 seats. The story is similar in the Senate. Assuming senators represent half their states’ residents, the 49 Democrats in the new Senate represent approximately 40 million more Americans than the 49 Republicans. Put more bluntly, the center of Congress is still not the center of the U.S. electorate.</p><p>Still, the 2006 election shows that the GOP’s institutional advantages aren’t enough to guarantee victory. And, now, Republicans are in serious trouble. Not only is their pay-to-play alliance with K Street in ruins, but they can no longer use their majority power to obscure their radicalism.</p><p>The conventional view is that the Democrats are the ones who are in for a tough two years, as they try to reconcile their basic liberal instincts with their unexpected 2006 victories in relatively conservative regions. But this conclusion -- reflective of some mysterious pundit geometry in which the electoral center is always halfway between the two parties -- simply misses the extent to which middle-of-the-road voters support the main elements of the Democratic agenda. Nearly every new Democrat in Congress ran not just against the war, but against privatization of Social Security and in support of raising the minimum wage, expanding health insurance, and protecting middle-class economic security -- even in red states like Virginia and Montana. As long as Democrats stay focused on these issues, Republicans will remain in a difficult position.</p><p>After all, the GOP took its heaviest losses within its moderate ranks. In an even more conservative Republican caucus, there will be a powerful faction that blames defeat on insufficient clarity and urges a further pull to the right.</p><p>Democrats should give this faction the clarity it wants. In pursuing their own agenda, they need to put the GOP between the rock of its intense base and the hard place of swing voters on every key issue -- from basic kitchen-table concerns (like health care and college tuition), to reform issues (like reestablishing pay-as-you-go budget rules and ensuring electoral fairness), to less controversial social issues (like stem-cell research).</p><p>Majority power also gives Democrats the capacity to ensure the accountability that was sorely lacking in recent years. High-minded commentators fret about a subpoena frenzy, but judicious use of congressional oversight and self-policing provides an unmatched opportunity for Democrats to correct past abuses while reminding voters of how, and for whom, the GOP majority used the tools of government authority. Here, too, Democratic control means that what was once carefully hidden can be exposed.</p><p>For a sense of how this might play out, look no further than Rick Santorum. In his voting record, Santorum was actually a run-of-the-mill GOP senator, only moderately to the right of his caucus’ middle. His distinctiveness came from his willingness to run as who he was, rather than as a fake moderate. The result? Despite spending more than any senator not named Clinton, Santorum lost by a staggering 18 points. One has to go back 26 years to find a Senate incumbent thrown out by a similar margin.</p><p>Republicans say they lost because they abandoned their principles. Santorum’s plight suggests that embracing those principles won’t help, either. The GOP is off-center. If Democrats want to retain their edge, they need to make that clear over and over again.</p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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New America Fellows ProgramElections & Political PartiesThe New RepublicMon, 25 Dec 2006 21:25:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/146" title="View user profile.">Jacob Hacker</a>7754 at http://newamerica.netThe Rise of the Office-Park Populisthttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/the_rise_of_the_office_park_populist_4559
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<span class="date-display-single">December 24, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/146" title="View user profile.">Jacob Hacker</a> </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 24, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>On Election Day last month, Democratic candidates did something they haven't done for a while: they decisively won the middle class. Middle-income voters -- including white, middle-income voters who have abandoned the party in droves in recent years -- preferred Democratic candidates by wide margins. Indeed, only voters with family incomes in excess of $100,000 a year were more likely to support Republicans than Democrats in House races in November.</p><p>The conventional view among the pundit class is that this middle-class restoration, valuable as it was for Democrats, creates thorny new tensions. Motivated mainly by their disgust with corruption, incompetence and the war in Iraq, middle-income voters are foul-weather friends who will flee the party <em>en masse</em> if it speaks forthrightly about, say, aiding the unemployed or the uninsured. Writing about the party's need to balance an uplifting message of opportunity and growth with demands for greater economic security, the veteran political reporter Thomas Edsall warns, "For Democrats to thread this needle will take a steady hand."</p><p>But the needle's eye may not be as narrow as most pundits believe. Middle-class voters didn't rush to the Democrats despite all the populist campaign messages, but -- in large part -- because of them. And they didn't do so merely in poor urban centers or regions ravaged by the loss of manufacturing jobs but in relatively affluent, exurban and suburban locales. Senator-elect Jim Webb eked out victory in Virginia by running up huge margins in the prosperous, white-collar north. Apparently he saw no conflict between his electoral base and his loud insistence, both during and after the campaign, that his reason for running was to "bring true fairness back to economic life."</p><p>All of this suggests that familiar debates pitting the disadvantaged against the comfortable may be taking a fateful new turn. Increasingly, economic insecurity is a major concern of Americans once thought to be beyond its cold reach: middle-class professionals who have gone to college, or even beyond, but who suddenly find that their education and skills are no longer a guaranteed safety net. These office-park populists, as they might be called, aren't necessarily buying smash-the-system rants against free trade and immigration. But they are skeptical of corporate promises and concerned about their security -- and surprisingly supportive of expanded health care and other ideas atop the Democrats' wish list.</p><p>For decades, it has been drilled into our heads that unskilled or uneducated workers are the big losers in a high-tech global economy. And indeed they are. What has been far less noted is that there is also a huge and growing amount of inequality among people on the highest rungs of the educational ladder. In other words, even as educated workers are pulling ever further ahead of less educated workers, they are also pulling ever further apart from one another. If you were one of the fortunate young students who rolled out of a computer-science program back in the 1990s, you may well have ended up in a cushy programming job offering a six-figure salary and lavish bonuses. If, by contrast, you find yourself looking for such a job today, you may discover that the best you can obtain is a contingent position with meager rewards, with the distinct possibility that you will soon be training your foreign replacement or writing the code that will do your old job.</p><p>Moreover, if you were the fortunate worker of the 1990s, you could very well be the unfortunate worker of the mid-2000s as well. And that raises another important point about risk: it's not just that there's a growing gap between high and low earners with advanced education. It's that all well-educated workers, even those at the top, are at much greater risk of economic reversals than they used to be. Remarkably, the ranks of the long-term unemployed -- people who spend more than six months looking for work -- are disproportionately professional and well educated. And it is better-paid workers who have seen the promise of guaranteed pensions replaced with the risks and uncertainties of private investment accounts like 401(k)s -- the less skilled rarely receive pensions at all.</p><p>Indeed, in some ways, workers who have invested the most in skills are most at risk today. For one, such investments are a lot more costly than they used to be. About a third of recent college graduates enter the job market with student-loan debts that exceed what experts consider reasonable -- a major increase from the past. What's more, skills can also put you directly at risk. If you have labored for years to learn cost accounting or blueprint preparation, you can gain a big leg up in the competition for jobs that require those specialized skills. But while these talents can help you prosper, they also make you dependent on particular jobs or lines of work. If these positions dry up, so does the market for your skills -- and the rewards those skills once delivered. (Unskilled workers, by contrast, have fewer opportunities to increase their wages but generally find it easier to move from one kind of job to another.)</p><p>Critics of arguments like these point out that the average American is richer than ever and that investments in education and skills are still on the whole worthwhile -- both true enough. But risk and insecurity are as much about the range of possible outcomes as they are about the average outcome. Here, at least, it is clear that Americans with degrees and skills face much greater worries than in the past -- even if their average incomes are higher.</p><p>The implications of office-park populism for American politics and policy are hardly crystal clear. Speaking to the mix of anxiety and optimism felt by middle-class workers will require more than harangues against immigrants or free trade. It will require innovative efforts to expand health insurance, strengthen retirement benefits and help less-than-superrich families save and invest. It will also require new types of insurance that protect against the most catastrophic risks. Proposals for new protections against huge income drops or budget-wrecking expenses have attracted support among politicians and policy experts. So has the concept of wage insurance: when workers lose high-paying jobs and take new, lower-paying ones, the government would guarantee them a portion of their former income for a certain number of years.</p><p>The growing sense of anxiety among the once-insulated middle class doesn't, of course, guarantee a long-term shift of political power or a new policy direction. But the creeping spread of economic insecurity up the class pyramid does hold out the tantalizing hope of a new sort of debate -- one that is not framed exclusively around what the prosperous many should do for the dispossessed few. Alexis de Tocqueville once marveled at Americans' enthusiastic embrace of "self-interest rightly understood," a philosophy of individualism that nonetheless celebrated aid to others and shared sacrifice. A body politic animated by self-interest rightly understood would lament the erosion of economic security not just because it was morally troubling or harmful to those at the bottom but because it was ultimately bad for us all.</p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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New America Fellows ProgramTrade and GlobalizationLaborEconomic GrowthThe New York Times MagazineMon, 25 Dec 2006 02:34:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/146" title="View user profile.">Jacob Hacker</a>7757 at http://newamerica.netLife's Mysteries at 100 and Countinghttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/life_s_mysteries_at_100_and_counting_4561
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<span class="date-display-single">December 24, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/30" title="View user profile.">Gregory Rodriguez</a> </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 24, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>Guadalupe Guillen went to Griffith Park in the late 1920s to look at model airplanes but wound up finding a husband. Or rather, he found her.</p><p>That’s one of the interesting things I learned when I finally met my Great Aunt Lupe, who turned 100 years old this month on the feast day of her namesake, the Virgin of Guadalupe.</p><p>My father took me to Cerritos to meet his favorite aunt, who has survived seven siblings, a husband and 18 presidential administrations. I thought that maybe she’d have some advice on how to live a long, happy life. </p><p>But rather than any grand formula for success, what I realized was that, in the end, it’s the little moments that carry us through. We all know this, I suppose, but I can’t decide if it’s a disappointing truth or a reassuring one. Part of me wanted this century-old relative to give me, Yoda-like, a formula so the force would be with me.</p><p>Humble, kind and patient with my silly questions, Lupe doesn’t see her life as part of any overarching narrative. Nor does she give a ringing endorsement of joining the exclusive century club.</p><p>Born on Dec. 12, 1906, in Jimenez, Chihuahua, Lupe arrived in Los Angeles as a young girl after her family fled the Mexican Revolution. Though today her memory is uneven and her sense of time warped, she is nonetheless lucid. Seated in an easy chair in a blue nightgown and pink slippers, she greeted me warmly and told me to sit in the chair across from her, the one with the <em>conejos</em> -- the pillows with embroidered rabbits.</p><p>"I never prayed to live this long, <em>mi’ijito</em>," she said. "I grew up like any girl. I didn’t do nothing special."</p><p>At first she demurred when asked about the most exciting moments of her life. "I worked," she said. "And then I got married and had children." She recalls making artificial flowers at a company her cousin owned on 7th Street downtown, and packing Lorna Doones and Fig Newtons for the National Biscuit Co.</p><p>I asked her what her siblings were like as children, particularly my grandmother, who was her older sister. "Oh, Enriqueta was always so peppy and liked to dance," she said. And she admitted that her older brother had a "funny name." "You don’t meet too many Liborios," she said.</p><p>When I asked her what kinds of places she liked to visit as a child, she immediately thought of her mother taking her to the movie "show." Her eyes shone when she remembered seeing her first talking picture. She liked to take the streetcar to Westlake -- now MacArthur -- Park and spend the afternoon. After arriving from Mexico, the family had lived on Burlington Avenue, west of downtown. They were lean years -- "Why should I lie?" she asked conspiratorially in Spanish -- but that made one particular childhood Christmas gift all the sweeter. "One time, Santa Claus brought me a crib with a doll in it," she said.</p><p>Her saddest day was when her father died seven decades ago.</p><p>She makes it clear that living to be 100 is no bed of roses, and her gratitude to her daughter, Susie, who takes care of her, is clearly mixed with guilt for being a burden.</p><p>Lupe said the best thing about living so long is that she’s been able to see her children and grandchildren grow up. Among her happiest days on Earth was her 50th wedding anniversary, and she smiled as she recalled meeting her late husband, Raphael Murillo: "I was in the park with my sisters when he saw me and came up to talk." After about a year of chaperoned house visits -- "My mother was kind of strict" -- he asked her to marry her.</p><p>You’d think that surviving everyone around you would give you a sense of uniqueness, even superiority. But Lupe maintains that her life is ultimately in God’s hands, and that he simply does not need her yet. And yet there was a twinkle in her eyes when she claimed to not know whether she’ll be "going up or down" after she dies. And the once-attractive young woman, now with thinning white hair, has not lost all vanity. "I’m not totally <em>arrugada</em> [wrinkled]," she said, touching her face and waiting for me to laugh.</p><p>On the drive home, my father told me how moved he becomes every time he visits his aunt. It’s not just because she was so kind to him when he was a boy. Indeed, there’s something awesome about a spirit that enables someone to charm you after 100 years of life. Not only did my Great Aunt Lupe not let me in on any particular secret, but meeting her only deepened my sense that life is still pretty much a mystery.</p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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New America Fellows ProgramNew America in CaliforniaLos Angeles TimesMon, 25 Dec 2006 03:38:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/30" title="View user profile.">Gregory Rodriguez</a>7755 at http://newamerica.netSweet Relief: The Life and Death of an Idealist in Iraqhttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/sweet_relief_the_life_and_death_of_an_idealist_in_iraq_4560
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/61" title="View user profile.">Peter Bergen</a> </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 24, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>An American aid worker named Marla Ruzicka and her Iraqi colleague, Faiz Ali Salim, were killed by a suicide bomber on April 16, 2005, as they drove along the road connecting Baghdad and its airport. It says much about the U.S. occupation of Iraq that this road is probably the most dangerous one in the world, but it says far more about Ruzicka and Salim that, despite the risks, they were driving along it to visit an injured Iraqi girl. </p><p>Like many others around the world, I was lucky to be Ruzicka’s friend. I was touched by her extraordinary generosity of spirit, which extended to everyone she met and even to those she had yet to meet -- like the thousands of Afghan and Iraqi noncombatants injured in some way by U.S. military action, for whom she lobbied incessantly. Those efforts have resulted in Congress’s appropriating nearly $40 million for Afghan and Iraqi civilians who have suffered losses at the hands of the U.S. military. <br /><br />In <em>Sweet Relief: The Marla Ruzicka Story</em> (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, $24.95), Jennifer Abrahamson has written a balanced, well-reported account of Ruzicka’s extraordinary life, which took her from a comfortable childhood in northern California to the frontlines of Afghanistan and Iraq. Ruzicka initially came off like a blond surfer girl (she was much given to exclaiming "Dude!" and "You rock!"), but underneath the effervescent exterior was a tough-minded, humanitarian advocate who had little tolerance for leftist anti-war demonstrators. Ruzicka understood that wars happen despite the demonstrations, and she wanted to do something concrete to alleviate the subsequent damage to human life. The organization Ruzicka founded -- CIVIC, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict -- continues to work to ease the suffering of innocents in wartime, but the world is a smaller place without her. She was 28 when she was killed. </p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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Counterterrorism Strategy InitiativeBooksIraqWashington PostMon, 25 Dec 2006 03:33:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/61" title="View user profile.">Peter Bergen</a>7756 at http://newamerica.netWhat We Wanted to Tell You About Iranhttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/what_we_wanted_to_tell_you_about_iran_4550
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<span class="date-display-single">December 22, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/88" title="View user profile.">Flynt Leverett</a> </div>
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Hillary Mann </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 22, 2006</span> </div>
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<p><a href="http://newamerica.net/publications/articles2006#redacted">Here is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article</a> we wrote for <em>The Times</em>, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency's Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.</p><p> Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration's first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins. </p><p>These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in <em>The Times</em> and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board. We provided the following citations to the board to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article, readers will have to read the citations for themselves. (<a href="http://newamerica.net/publications/articles2006#redacted">See links below</a>.)</p><p>The decisions of the C.I.A. and the White House took us by surprise. Since leaving government service three and a half years ago, Mr. Leverett has put more than 20 articles through the C.I.A.'s prepublication review process and the Publication Review Board has never changed a word or asked the White House for permission to clear these articles. </p><p>What's more, we have spent a collective 20 years serving our country as career civil servants in national security, for both Republican and Democratic administrations. We know firsthand the importance of protecting sensitive information. But we also know the importance of shared knowledge. In the entrance to the C.I.A.'s headquarters the words of the Gospel of John are inscribed, "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."</p><p>National security must be above politics. In a democracy, transparency in government has to be honored and protected. To classify information for reasons other than the safety and security of the United States and its interests is a violation of these principles. It is for this reason that we will continue to press for the release of the article without the material deleted.</p> <p><em> Flynt Leverett is a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Hillary Mann, a former Foreign Service officer, participated in the United States discussions with Iran from 2001 to 2003.</em></p><p> </p><h2><a name="redacted" title="redacted"></a>Redacted Article and Related Links</h2><p><em>Below are the citations referred to by Mann and Leverett, as well as the redacted article -- both its text, and an image showing how it appeared in print in the Dec. 22 New York Times.</em></p> <div> <img class="align-right" src="http://newamerica.net/files/pictures/nyt_leverett2.gif" alt="" width="600" height="613" /><ul><li> "<a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/336655341.html?dids=336655341:336655341&amp;FMT=ABS&amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&amp;fmac=&amp;date=May+15%2C+2003&amp;author=&amp;desc=Iran%27s+Leader+Condemns+Saudi+Attacks">Iran's Leader Condemns Saudi Attacks</a>," <em>The Washington Post</em>, May 15, 2003<br /><em>(Articles on The Washington Post are preview only. Full versions require purchase.)</em></li> <li> "<a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/629193161.html?dids=629193161:629193161&amp;FMT=ABS&amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&amp;fmac=&amp;date=May+6%2C+2004&amp;author=James+Dobbins&amp;desc=Time+to+Deal+With+Iran">Time to Deal With Iran</a>," <em>The Washington Post</em>, May 6, 2004</li> <li>"Foreign Minister Briefs MP's on Talks With the United States," BBC Monitoring, May 20, 2003</li> <li> "<a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1062127781.html?dids=1062127781:1062127781&amp;FMT=ABS&amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&amp;fmac=&amp;date=Jun+18%2C+2006&amp;author=Glenn+Kessler+-+Washington+Post+Staff+Writer&amp;desc=In+2003%2C+U.S.+Spurned+Iran%27s+Offer+of+Dialogue">In 2003, U.S. Spurned Iran's Offer of Dialogue: Some Officials Lament Lost Opportunity</a>," <em>The Washington Post</em>, June 18, 2006</li> <li> "<a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/432354141.html?dids=432354141:432354141&amp;FMT=ABS&amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&amp;fmac=&amp;date=Oct+29%2C+2003&amp;author=Glenn+Kessler&amp;desc=U.S.+Ready+to+Resume+Talks+With+Iran%2C+Armitage+Says">U.S. Ready to Resume Talks With Iran, Armitage Says</a>," <em>The Washington Post</em>, Oct. 29, 2003 </li> <li> "<a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/340011151.html?dids=340011151:340011151&amp;FMT=ABS&amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&amp;fmac=&amp;date=May+25%2C+2003&amp;author=Glenn+Kessler&amp;desc=U.S.+Eyes+Pressing+Uprising+In+Iran">U.S. Eyes Pressing Uprising in Iran: Officials Cite Al Qaeda's Link, Nuclear Program</a>," <em>The Washington Post</em>, May 25, 2003 </li> <li> "<a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,212595,00.html">Iran, Afghanistan Juggle Hot Potato Hekmatyar</a>," <em>Time</em>, Feb. 23, 2002 </li> <li> "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/opinion/24leverett.html">The Gulf Between Us</a>," <em>The New York Times</em>, Jan. 24, 2006</li> <li> "<a href="http://www.tcf.org/publications/internationalaffairs/leverett_diplomatic.pdf">Dealing with Tehran: Assessing U.S. Diplomatic Options Toward Iran</a>," (PDF) Century Foundation, Dec. 4, 2006 </li> <li>"<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-05-11-iran-usat_x.htm">Iran, U.S. Holding Talks in Geneva</a>," <em>USA Today</em>, May 11, 2003</li> <li> "<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-05-21-iran-usat_x.htm">Mutual Terror Accusations Halt U.S.-Iran Talks</a>," <em>USA Today</em>, May 21, 2003</li> <li> "<a href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2001/dec/6759.htm">Press Briefing on Board Plane, En Route Moscow</a>," State Department Web site, Dec. 9, 2001</li> </ul></div><h3> Redacted Text of Op-Ed </h3><p>The Iraq Study Group has added its voice to a burgeoning chorus of commentators, politicians, and former officials calling for a limited, tactical dialogue with Iran regarding Iraq. The Bush administration has indicated a conditional willingness to pursue a similarly compartmented dialogue with Tehran over Iran’s nuclear activities. </p> <p>Unfortunately, advocates of limited engagement — either for short-term gains on specific issues or to “test” Iran regarding broader rapprochement — do not seem to understand the 20-year history of United States-Iranian cooperation on discrete issues or appreciate the impact of that history on Iran’s strategic outlook. In the current regional context, issue-specific engagement with Iran is bound to fail. The only diplomatic approach that might succeed is a comprehensive one aimed at a “grand bargain” between the United States and the Islamic Republic. </p><p>Since the 1980s, cooperation with Iran on specific issues has been tried by successive administrations, but United States policymakers have consistently allowed domestic politics or other foreign policy interests to torpedo such cooperation and any chance for a broader opening. The Reagan administration’s engagement with Iran to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon came to grief in the Iran-contra scandal. The first Bush administration resumed contacts with Tehran to secure release of the last American hostages in Lebanon, but postponed pursuit of broader rapprochement until after the 1992 presidential election. </p><p>In 1994, the Clinton administration acquiesced to the shipment of Iranian arms to Bosnian Muslims, but the leak of this activity in 1996 and criticism from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Robert Dole shut down possibilities for further United States-Iranian cooperation for several years. </p><p>These episodes reinforced already considerable suspicion among Iranian leaders about United States intentions toward the Islamic Republic. But, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, senior Iranian diplomats told us that Tehran believed it had a historic opportunity to improve relations with Washington. Iranian leaders offered to help the United States in responding to the attacks without making that help contingent on changes in America’s Iran policy — a condition stipulated in the late 1990s when Tehran rejected the Clinton administration’s offer of dialogue — calculating that cooperation would ultimately prompt fundamental shifts in United States policy. </p><p>The argument that Iran helped America in Afghanistan because it was in Tehran’s interest to get rid of the Taliban is misplaced. Iran could have let America remove the Taliban without getting its own hands dirty, as it remained neutral during the 1991 gulf war. Tehran cooperated with United States efforts in Afghanistan primarily because it wanted a better relationship with Washington. </p><p>But Tehran was profoundly disappointed with the United States response. After the 9/11 attacks, <span style="background:#000000 none repeat scroll 0% 50%;color:#000000;">xxx xxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xx</span> set the stage for a November 2001 meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s six neighbors and Russia. <span style="background:#000000 none repeat scroll 0% 50%;color:#000000;">xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx</span> Iran went along, working with the United States to eliminate the Taliban and establish a post-Taliban political order in Afghanistan. </p><p>In December 2001, <span style="background:#000000 none repeat scroll 0% 50%;color:#000000;">xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx x</span> Tehran to keep Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the brutal pro-Al Qaeda warlord, from returning to Afghanistan to lead jihadist resistance there. <span style="background:#000000 none repeat scroll 0% 50%;color:#000000;">xxxxx xxxxxxx</span> so long as the Bush administration did not criticize it for harboring terrorists. But, in his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush did just that in labeling Iran part of the “axis of evil.” Unsurprisingly, Mr. Hekmatyar managed to leave Iran in short order after the speech. <span style="background:#000000 none repeat scroll 0% 50%;color:#000000;">xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx</span> the Islamic Republic could not be seen to be harboring terrorists. </p><p><span style="background:#000000 none repeat scroll 0% 50%;color:#000000;">xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxx xxx xx xxxxxxx</span> This demonstrated to Afghan warlords that they could not play America and Iran off one another and prompted Tehran to deport hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives who had fled Afghanistan. </p><p>Those who argue that Iran did not cause Iraq’s problems and therefore can be of only limited help in dealing with Iraq’s current instability must also acknowledge that Iran did not “cause” Afghanistan’s deterioration into a terrorist-harboring failed state. But, when America and Iran worked together, Afghanistan was much more stable than it is today, Al Qaeda was on the run, the Islamic Republic’s Hezbollah protégé was comparatively restrained, and Tehran was not spinning centrifuges. Still, the Bush administration conveyed no interest in building on these positive trends. </p><p><span style="background:#000000 none repeat scroll 0% 50%;color:#000000;">xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx x xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxx x xx x x xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xx xxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xx</span> </p><p>From an Iranian perspective, this record shows that Washington will take what it can get from talking to Iran on specific issues but is not prepared for real rapprochement. Yet American proponents of limited engagement anticipate that Tehran will play this fruitless game once more — even after numerous statements by senior administration figures targeting the Islamic Republic for prospective “regime change” and by President Bush himself that attacking Iran’s nuclear and national security infrastructure is “on the table.” </p><p>Our experience dealing with <span style="background:#000000 none repeat scroll 0% 50%;color:#000000;">xxxx xxxx</span> Iranian diplomats over Afghanistan and in more recent private conversations in Europe and elsewhere convince us that Iran will not go down such a dead-end road again. Iran will not help the United States in Iraq because it wants to avoid chaos there; Tehran is well positioned to defend its interests in Iraq unilaterally as America flounders. Similarly, Iran will not accept strategically meaningful limits on its nuclear capabilities for a package of economic and technological goodies. </p><p>Iran will only cooperate with the United States, whether in Iraq or on the nuclear issue, as part of a broader rapprochement addressing its core security concerns. This requires extension of a United States security guarantee — effectively, an American commitment not to use force to change the borders or form of government of the Islamic Republic — bolstered by the prospect of lifting United States unilateral sanctions and normalizing bilateral relations. This is something no United States administration has ever offered, and that the Bush administration has explicitly refused to consider. </p><p>Indeed, no administration would be able to provide a security guarantee unless United States concerns about Iran’s nuclear activities, regional role and support for terrorist organizations were definitively addressed. That is why, at this juncture, resolving any of the significant bilateral differences between the United States and Iran inevitably requires resolving all of them. Implementing the reciprocal commitments entailed in a “grand bargain” would almost certainly play out over time and in phases, but all of the commitments would be agreed up front as a package, so that both sides would know what they were getting.</p><p>Unfortunately, the window for pursuing a comprehensive settlement with Iran will not be open indefinitely. The Iranian leadership is more radicalized today, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, than it was three years ago, and could become more radicalized in the future, depending on who ultimately succeeds Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader. If President Bush does not move decisively toward strategic engagement with Tehran during his remaining two years in office, his successor will not have the same opportunities that he will have so blithely squandered.</p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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Middle East Task ForceNew America Fellows ProgramAmerican Strategy ProgramIran InitiativeNational SecurityCivil LibertiesForeign PolicyMediaNew York TimesSat, 23 Dec 2006 01:18:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/88" title="View user profile.">Flynt Leverett</a>7758 at http://newamerica.netRead My Lips: Taxes (again) Doom Bushhttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/read_my_lips_taxes_again_doom_bush_4628
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<span class="date-display-single">December 21, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/120" title="View user profile.">James Pinkerton</a> </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 21, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>President Bush is willing to raise taxes. That reality was a big surprise to me 16 years ago, in 1990, when I was working in the White House. It’s less of a surprise to me in 2006, when I am on the outside -- because, after a while, you learn to identify the warning signs.</p><p>In 1990, President George H.W. Bush broke his word on taxes, and he broke his own presidency. In 2006, his son, President George W. Bush, seems poised to destroy what little remains of his presidency. </p><p>In both cases, both Bushes have been willing to talk about "process" and "common ground." But, when it comes to taxes, the opposing Democrats know two things: First, the Republicans have a winning issue on taxes -- specifically, when they promise not to raise taxes. Second, if taxes are indeed to be raised, the Democrats want the Republicans to go first and say that taxes are "on the table." In other words, Democrats want Republicans to take the blame.</p><p>So here’s the "on the table" language, right on the front page of yesterday’s <em>Washington Post</em>: "Signaling a new flexibility on issues in the wake of the Democrats’ wins, Bush said he is willing to discuss Democratic ideas for solving the Social Security problem, including tax increases." The president is quoted as adding, "I don’t see how you can move forward without people feeling comfortable about putting ideas on the table."</p><p>Those are the magic words the Democrats were waiting to hear. As <em>Post</em> reporter Michael Fletcher explains, Bush’s "new flexibility" is "part of a larger White House plan to renew the effort to tame the rising costs of government entitlement programs as the nation’s population ages." And so, <em>The Post</em> reporter added, the administration is willing to consider "higher payroll taxes."</p><p><em>The Post</em>, of course, has never met a tax increase it didn’t like, and the Powertown paper is not above trying to cajole Republicans into generating more revenue for its Beltway readership. But a look at the transcript confirms <em>The Post</em>’s interpretation. Asked whether tax increases are on the table, Bush answered that the Democrats "can come to the table and talk about them."</p><p>In D.C., that’s code for opening up a discussion that leads, inevitably, to a tax increase. I know, because I was there the last time this happened.</p><p>It was on May 3, 1990, when then-President Bush was asked if he would consider a tax hike, in light of his famous "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge from his victorious 1988 campaign.</p><p>At that 1990 press conference, a reporter reminded Bush, "I haven’t heard any ‘read my lips.’" To which the president responded, referring to the tax-hike-hungry Democrats, "No, you haven’t heard it because I’m going to sit down and talk to them."</p><p>In other words, Bush was agreeing to put away the powerful "no new taxes" pledge. So the Democrats were free to talk about what they had always wanted, a tax increase -- and Bush was free to destroy his own conservative, limited-government base. Which is exactly what happened. The president "negotiated" a real tax increase in return for illusory spending cuts, culminating in party-busting budget votes in October 1990.</p><p>Meanwhile, burdened by this new tax increase, the economy sank into recession, spending ballooned and the 41st president was soundly defeated for re-election in 1992.</p><p>So it’s déja vu for me to see this President Bush about to repeat the same losing process. As he said at Wednesday’s press conference, he wants to find "bipartisan cooperation" on Social Security financing.</p><p>Advisers are telling Bush that such bargaining will result in a solid domestic-policy legacy, as well as the shoring up of congressional support for the Iraq war. But history tells me that, if he raises taxes, he will demolish -- as did his father before him -- what little remains of his presidency.</p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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New America Fellows ProgramPolitical HistoryFiscal PolicyNewsdayFri, 22 Dec 2006 04:01:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/120" title="View user profile.">James Pinkerton</a>7759 at http://newamerica.netGet Out of the Way, Drivershttp://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2006/get_out_of_the_way_drivers_4558
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<span class="date-display-single">December 21, 2006</span></div>
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<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/23" title="View user profile.">Steven Hill</a> </div>
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Dmitri Iglitzin, lecturer, University of Washington School of Law </div>
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<span class="date-display-single">December 21, 2006</span> </div>
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<p>You might think that holiday shoppers driving on the nation’s highways would have enough to worry about with bad weather and high gas prices. But unless there is a sudden about-face on the part of the Federal Highway Administration, Americans are about to receive an unwelcome gift that, unlike a wrong-color necktie or bad-fitting socks, could literally kill them. </p><p>The FHA, which oversees our nation’s highway system, is about to issue a regulation allowing 97-foot-long multi-truck monstrosities to roar up and down our highways. These vehicle combinations, called "saddlemount vehicle transporter combinations," or simply "four-ways," consist of four trucks linked together with only the first truck having both front and rear wheels on the ground. With the other three trucks, only the rear wheels touch the ground; the front wheels rest on the truck preceding it. From the side, the four-ways look like elephants holding each others’ tails with their trunks -- only much, much larger, and more dangerous. </p><p>As one veteran truck driver with 40 years of experience put it in testimony submitted to the FHA, "The notion that a saddlemount 97 feet long and consisting of four semitractors is safe, is absurd. All four-way configurations have the tendency to cause the fourth truck to whip and sway. It can quickly become a dangerous situation." </p><p>Another driver, who has been driving vehicle combinations for 20 years, testified, "While driving these setups, the rear truck is unstable and wanders excessively from side to side. This type of setup is a danger to the motoring public and to myself.”</p><p>Many drivers who will have to drive these monster rigs have been outspoken about the safety risks the vehicle combinations represent. So why is this happening, especially around the holidays, when so many families will be on the road? </p><p>Under current federal regulations, states are allowed to impose an overall length limit of 75 feet on four-ways, and almost every state has imposed such limits. But longer truck combinations mean fewer trips and fewer drivers needed by the trucking companies, which cuts their costs and increases profits. The American Trucking Association, National Automobile Dealers Association and other industry trade associations all have pushed hard to overturn the limits regulating giant, multi-truck combos. </p><p>Last year, finally, they were successful. Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the "Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users," known as SAFETEA-LU. That’s a mouthful of doublespeak for a misnamed law that permits truck combos nearly a third of a football field long to sway dangerously down our roads. And despite a Republican Congress that claimed to stand for state’s rights and less federal interference in local affairs, this law could be interpreted by the FHA as actually prohibiting any state from passing a law restricting four-ways to less than 97 feet. </p><p>Vigorous opposition has emerged. Truckers like J.J. Bishop, a longtime Teamsters driver, testified about seeing a horrible accident caused by one of these saddlemounts. "The general public doesn’t realize what a risk these trucks are," he said. "These combinations have a tendency to sway, making them extremely hard to control and extremely dangerous." </p><p>Besides the firsthand observations of the people who ought to know best -- the drivers -- the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials testified to the FHA that the new size limitation "has raised serious concerns among some state enforcement officials concerning possible safety and infrastructure issues." </p><p>Congressman Dave Reichert, a Republican from Washington state, has written to the head of the FHA about what he sees as "significant public policy safety concerns" and urging him to allow states to enact their own limits on four-ways. </p><p>The FHA still is considering whether to give the green light to these behemoths; there may be time to prevent this dangerous policy from being implemented. But that will happen only if a lot more Americans and elected officials say "no thanks" to this ill-advised regulation. The safety of the traveling public should get a higher priority than any impulse to play Santa to the trucking industry this holiday season. </p><div class="field field-type-text field-field-url">
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New America in CaliforniaTransportationSt. Louis Post-DispatchThu, 21 Dec 2006 08:22:00 +0000<a href="http://newamerica.net/user/23" title="View user profile.">Steven Hill</a>7760 at http://newamerica.net